More than 300 former employees of Express Newspapers will make a nostalgic return to Fleet Street on 1 July for a reunion in the building that was the newspaper’s headquarters for 56 years.
The group – known as the Express Old Boys & Girls Social Club – which has met regularly on the first Tuesday of every month since 1985, will relive memories of their time in the Black Lubianka, as it was nicknamed.
Express Newspapers vacated the art deco Grade II listed building nearly 20 ago when it moved to new hi-tech offices in Blackfriars.
Investment bank Goldman Sachs, the company which bought and refurbished the building in the Nineties, has given permission for the ‘We’re Going Home’reunion.
Norman Luck, former Express special investigations editor and current coordinator of the group said: ‘We have a membership of nearly 600 former employees worldwide, many of whom schedule their annual holidays back home to coincide with our ‘First Tuesday’ meetings. This will be the ultimate trip down memory lane.
‘To stand in the front hall of the black-tiled building which was once the nerve-centre of the whole Express operation and remember the famous names that have passed through it will be eerie and tinged with sadness. It will be a sell-out, all-ticket event, and our sincere thanks must go to Goldman Sachs for making it possible. We are the only national newspaper to operate regular reunion meetings for former employees, and it will be wonderful to see so many familiar faces together in one place.”
The old Express building, which featured in the Sixties’ film The Day the Earth Caught Fire, was built in 1933. The classic art deco design of the front hall, now preserved under the Grade II listing, includes chromium serpent handrails, an ornate muralled ceiling and a multicoloured floor.
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